Bram Stoker's Dracula by Fred SaberhagenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
For starters lets properly identify this particular novel as its title is misleading. This is NOT Bram Stoker's classic 1987 novel Dracula which we all know, this is a novelization of the 1992 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Meaning it's an adaptation of the movie screenplay in the form of a novel.
Having said that, it's pretty good, giving us not just the story we saw on screen but scenes with additional dialogue and even some scenes not in the movie which flesh out the story quite a bit.
The book (and movie) are very sympathetic toward Dracula, painting him as a tragic figure who fell from grace and embraced evil. The main plot follows the book fairly faithfully, Jonathan Harker, a real estate agent, travels to Transylvania to meet with The Count who wants to buy property and settle in London to further expand his vampiric influence. Where the story deviates is that while in London he meets Mina, Harker's fiancée who greatly resembles Dracula's lost love.
As a fan of novelizations, this was a very good read for me and as an aside I'll mention that the author Fred Saberhagen had written about Dracula before in his trilogy The Dracula Tape, The Holmes-Dracula File and An Old Friend of the Family, all very worthy reads.
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